When playing a non-electronic game with one or more other people, for example, a card game such as bridge, the social interaction arising through verbal communication between the players during the game typically adds much to the enjoyment of the game. Verbal communication is also often an element of game play, since comments made by a player to an opponent during a game can have the effect of causing the opponent to lose concentration and perform poorly, while comments made to team members can provide encouragement, thereby improving their quality of play. Verbal communication between persons playing games is thus clearly an important element of the gaming experience.
The verbal repartee between players that is so important to game play was initially missing when players first began to play electronic games over the Internet and other network links. Players at different sites were generally not able to communicate with each other, because their personal computers (PCs) only communicated data related to the play of a game over the network. The loss of the verbal communication and related social interaction that is such an important aspect of games played by people at the same location thus caused games played over the Internet to be less interesting. To address this problem, hardware and software solutions were developed that support voice communications between PCs over the Internet or other network during game play. At about the same time, techniques were developed to convey voice over the Internet or other networks (i.e., voice over IP) to enable communications between parties connected by the network without incurring the cost of conventional telephone long distance calls. This work resulted in the creation of various protocols supporting voice over IP communication, including the H.323 specification, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and Media Gateway Control Protocol/Media Gateway Controller (MGCP/MEGACO) specification. The techniques developed for voice over IP are generally applicable to and have been used in schemes to enable verbal communications between players of PC electronic games over a network. Examples of systems that provide voice communication between connected PCs during game play include Microsoft Corporation's SIDE WINDER GAME VOICE™, Mindmaker, Inc.'s GAME COMMANDER 2™ device and software, TEAMSOUND™ software, GameSpy Industries' ROGER WILCO™ software, and Alienware Technology's FIRST CONTAC™ software. The voice communication provided by these products greatly adds to the enjoyment of playing games on PCs that are connected over the Internet or other networks. Some of these systems operate in peer-to-peer mode, in which voice data are transferred over the network directly between PCs, while others require a voice server that receives the voice data from one game player's PC and forwards the voice data over the network to one or more other PCs that are connected to the network for playing the game.
Since these systems provide communication for only one player per PC, each PC produces its own network stream of voice data, and this network stream is directed to other PC of each other player (or to the voice server, which then directs the voice data to the PC of each other player). This approach thus produces a substantial network data overhead.
Currently, none of the prior art systems for PC game voice communication enable multiple players per PC in a game played over the Internet or other network and therefore, the prior art does not support multiplayer-per-PC voice communication functionality. Also, if such multiplayer PC systems were developed using existing voice communication protocols for several players on a PC, they would likely require an excessive amount of computational resources. Allocating the required resources to voice communication for all players of the game on a PC might well have an adverse effect on the quality of game play, unless the PC had a very fast processor, lots of memory, and a fast video driver card.
In contrast to PCs, dedicated game consoles often do not have the processing power and available memory of a powerful PC, so this problem is of even greater concern in developing a scheme to support voice communications by multiple players on each game console. It would be desirable to allocate a fixed level to the requirements for memory and other computer resources needed for voice communication, independent of the number of players who are capable of voice communication on the game console, as appropriate for the game functionality and design, so that the resources required for voice processing are not allowed to increase beyond a defined limit as the number of players participating in voice communication changes. It would also be advantageous to enable voice communications between multiple players for each instance of a game at a site, and to enable each player to control with whom the player verbally communicates (both speaking and listening), and to combine all of the voice data from that instance of the game into a single network data stream in order to reduce the network bandwidth required for voice communications between multiplayer game consoles. It would further be desirable to share certain resources, such as a voice data encoder or decoder, between multiple players for a single game instance at a site.
As the quality of game graphics improves, it becomes more important to maintain other features relating to realism. One such feature is the ability to provide lip sync or other viseme (lip position) information with the voice data during game play, to enable the lips of a graphic character displayed in a game to move in synchronization with the words of a player who is represented by and controlling the graphic character in the game display. However, existing voice communication systems typically do not convey data to enable lip sync, and as a result, the player receiving the voice communication will not see the lips of the character in the game corresponding to the player who is speaking move in sync with the speaker's words.
While voice communication is generally a desirable feature, if misused by a specific player, it may become annoying and reduce the enjoyment of games by other players. The prior art also does not enable a player to block an annoying player from talking or listening to the player during any game in which an annoying player is a participant, regardless of the game console used by the annoying player. Different people have varying degrees of tolerance for annoying behavior of others. However, any player who chooses not to listen or speak to a specific other player for any reason, must have the ability to prevent communication with the specific other player, without giving up the ability to communicate with other players in games. A player may be upset because the player feels a specific other player uses excessive profanity or sexually explicit language, or uses language or makes comments that the player feels to be derogatory or socially unacceptable.
A parent may also want to block a child from participating in voice communication during game play to avoid exposing the child to any profanity and to preclude verbal communication with someone who might attempt to contact the child outside the scope of game play for harmful purposes. This parental block of a child's voice communication should be stored on an online game service so that it remains in effect if the child connects to the online game service from a different game console. The prior art game voice communication systems do not permit blocking verbal communications by a selected player, such as a child, participating in games using a multiplayer game console.
Should any player's verbal conduct while playing games over the Internet or other network become so egregious (based upon the number of complaints received from other players) as to warrant it, an online game service should be able to prevent that player from participating in voice communication while playing games through the online game service for a period of time, and if further justified by the continued receipt of complaints about that player's verbal behavior, to ban the player from using voice communication permanently. The current voice communication systems do not enable this level of control to be applied at each online game service so that a player is banned regardless of an alias used or the game console through which the player participates in game play through the online game service.
Although voice communications systems are well known for use on PCs playing games, gaming consoles have a different architecture, with a defined limit on available system resources. Most game consoles enable multiple players on a single instance of a game, i.e., on the same console. When gaming consoles are interconnected over the Internet or other network, they should preferably be able to provide voice communications for each of multiple players on the game console. Use of conventional techniques that have been developed to enable voice communication during game play on PCs will be unacceptable on game consoles, because of the more limited computing resources and the need to accommodate voice communications for multiple players. Accordingly, there is clearly a need for a method and system to enable voice communication for games played on one or more multiplayer game consoles, which addresses the issues noted above.